(Note: The above video contains images of drug use)
Rarely is a movie sound track so popular that filmmakers feel the need to release a second one. Trainspotting, Danny Boyle’s film about a group of Edinburgh heroin addicts based on the book by Irvine Welsh, came out in 1996 riding a cresting wave of British pop. Its sound track deftly combines the music of contemporary bands such as Blur, Pulp and Elastica with earlier sounds by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, and it sold so well that a second volume, featuring songs from the film that didn’t make it onto the first one, was released the following year. Spiked with tracks by electronica acts like Underworld and Leftfield, Trainspotting helped introduce American audiences to ’90s British music beyond Oasis and the Spice Girls.